Milliband gets ready to roll

"Can Gordon lead us into the next election and win? Yes. I'm absolutely confident about that." - David Milliband

So now we know: he's quite definitely going to challenge Gordon Brown for the top job! Oh well, I suppose being captain of a sinking ship is better than being the cabin boy on a seaworthy one. Isn't it?

Skyvan sprains an ankle

My word, that's not nice. After I left yesterday, the Skyvan had to abort a landing after a wheel strut buckled. There's a happy ending, though: the pilot diverted to Oxford airport (presumably because there's more firefighting equipment there if the worst happens) and landed effectively. Hope the Skyvan can be repaired; the results of landing belly down won't have been pretty, and with only 35 of these charismatic planes in existence we don't want to lose one.

Great skydiving trip... apart from the skydiving

The UKS Weston Boogie! A festival of skydiving, hundreds of parachutists gathering at a military base in Oxfordshire. The mark of a true skydiver is when you spend the weekends at dropzones and... not jump there.

Unless, of course, you're a RAPS student, in which case you won't jump largely because they're not interested in you doing so. Over a thousand jumps on Saturday, and somehow only ten places on the manifest were available to people learning how to jump out of a plane. On a perfect windless day with five lifts an hour, the wait for a RAPS dispatch was... five blasted hours. And we still had to fight for it.

While the staff were pleasant enough, the message was clear: skydiving is our sport. We're not interested in anyone else learning it. Now get off our dropzone.

Well, they're doing a good job of it. I'm pretty down on jumping tonight, despite the rest of the weekend being great: good weather, good company, and beautiful villagey surroundings straight out of Miss Marple. Not down on the sport itself, but on the sheer difficulty of actually getting yourself manifested for a jump when the weather's even remotely good. The only time dropzones are interested in us are when it's raining or windy (and we can't jump.) You don't run a sustainable business on neglecting prospective customers for life, but it seems that's what the industry wants. The skydiving population of the UK (those holding a BPA membership) is a fairly constant 5000; that strikes me as a growable business, but the franchise holders aren't interested in growing it. Fair enough.

I can handle the DRP that went wrong and prevented me moving up a stage; I can cope with the time between sessions that lets your body forget the instinctive movements out the door; the laughs and jibes of experienced skydivers aren't a problem, you just roll with them. What is a problem is that it just isn't worth going to a dropzone for one or two jumps. The answer, I think, lies in switching courses: dropping the military-style RAPS and heading for the sports-focussed fun of AFF. A shortcut to an A license, then at least I can get on the manifest faster, although I probably won't be able to do this before 2009.

What sex were those agents again?

Whoever is responsible for that title should be taken out and shot. (Preferably after being whipped with rubber hoses. It is a war film, after all.)

I mean, 'Female Agents'? That's a casting brief, not a working title. OK, they're agents. Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, probably Juliette Binoche in there somewhere: female, OK, we get it. Making the fact they have breasts the main point of the film is both condescending and insulting: like affirmative action legislation, it suggests these people are special just because of their genes, rather than because of what they did. Yes, female agents were an unusual sight in 1940s France, but you can't build a whole story on this one fact - and you shouldn't make it the whole point of the title. What about something riffing on what they achieved, like 'They Served Too' or 'The Quieter Ones' or whatever? Or even keeping the French title, Femmes de l'Ombre - it sounds better even if it means the same.

Labour loses ultra-safe seat

A 22.5% swing away from Labour! While it's a Scottish seat, and the winning party was the SNP, this is another big blow to New Labour and Gordon Brown.

Glasgow East was one of the safest Labour seats in the country: a hellhole of crumbling council blocks, unemployment and crime. But the whole basis of Scottish politics is hating the English, and the Scottish Nationalists took full advantage of it. It's not well known south of the border that Gordon Brown isn't that liked in Scotland: he's seen as an English sellout rather than a local boy made good, in the same way American blacks chide any African-American with a degree and a job an 'Oreo' (white on the inside). Stupid and primitive, but it happens.

And now, by around 300 votes, Labour has one less seat in the House of Commons. Death by a thousand cuts. Brilliant.

Talulua does the Hula?

A New Zealand girl has been a ward of court so she can change her somewhat unusual name. Why didn't she just shorten it to Tal? I mean, it'd avoid the stigma and she'd have an instant advantage when she plays that make-words-from-the-letters-of-your-name game in school (I always hated that, not having an E to my name - no, 'Chris' isn't short for Christopher.) I'd definitely support court action against the parents who called their child 'Sex Fruit' though, however biologically accurate the term may be.

British banks enter the 21st century

At last. Shovelled a grand or two across from my business to personal bank account today, and the transaction took just seconds. In the time it took me to open up my personal banking web pages the payment had arrived. Wow!

I'd known this was on the cards for some time; same-day payment processing has been planned by UK banks for years. But the cynic in me hadn't really believed it would ever happen.

I mean, follow the money: until now British banks have taken 3-5 working days to pass a payment between them electronically, a hangover from the days of cheque-based pen-and-paper banking. During that week of limbo the money wasn't in the payer's account, but hadn't arrived in the payee's account; it was in the temporary care of ... the banks. Who made millions (about £30m a year between the main High St ones) from adding it to their investment float. As with any other area of business, everyone will talk about customer service and business ethics, but in the end nothing happens until the financial case makes sense, and providing faster payment processing, in this minds of the British banks, didn't.

But finally the numbers must have worked out: either the cost of the new technology has fallen £30m below the cost of maintaining the old system, or the price of not competing with incoming foreign banks is now above £30m. I bet this change was driven by regulatory updates a few years ago that let competitors like Santander (of Spain) enter the British retail banking market, and it's all good. Once again, it shows competition from outside isn't to be feared, but welcomed.

Among the new faces

Back on campus. With skydiving, London trips, and overnighters elsewhere, I've spent precisely two nights in the last 15 in my own room, although I've sort of adapted; I don't feel I'm running on empty, far from it (life's actually full of adrenalin.) But one thing I notice this morning is the predominance of new faces around Lakeside.

Summer courses and short modules abound in 'Term 4', the near-mythical part of the university calendar that spans summer, and the school puts its empty residential blocks to good use. So there's an influx of changing faces around the student village, none of whom I recognise. (Even on a 5000 strong campus population you see the same set of faces during the academic year.) And now that villagey feel has gone. Just another sign it's all coming to an end...

Time to graduate to a creche

Hmmm, this could mean that higher education is now available to the under-5s, or that an unusual number of undergrads were lackadaisical about contraception during their degrees. Either way, looks like I'm once again getting 'down with the kids'.

Public sector porcines

Outside an office in Holburn, the public sector union UNISON is on the march over pay.

Waving banners, blowing whistles, generally having a wonderful day off from their ultra-safe jobs they can never be sacked from. How very diplomatic. How very courageous. How very self-sacrificing.

What a bunch of UNBELIEVABLY UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS.

Do these people realise how good a deal they get? Do they have any fucking idea? And has even one of them bothered to read a newspaper recently? How last Friday, eleven years of New Labour's appalling mismanagement finally got exposed as the UK economy finally went down the toilet - with a 20% stockmarket fall, real inflation at 4.6% and nothing, nothing whatsoever, left in the Exchequer to pay for it due to New Labour profligacy despite a decade of rising tax take?

I am a member of the hard-pressed private sector middle class, the group that isn't allowed to complain yet has to PAY for every index-linked pension, every early retirement, every generous severance package the public sector porcines want to suck out of Britain's competitiveness, their slack-jawed faces bloated by endless years of being sucked up to by Labour's public-sector-bloating policies that ignore - worse than ignore; give an open-palmed smack in the face to - the real wealth creators.

Rise up, all you who work to actually build the economy rather than suck the lifeblood out of it, for YOU ARE BEING IGNORED.

I'm a private sector worker who's never made even the slightest demand on the public purse, much less stick my snout ever deeper into it in times of economic pain. AND I AM ANGRY.

Stop the world, I want to get off

I go away for a few days and the world's stockmarkets collapse around its ears? I can't leave these people alone for one moment.

Bronzed and flighty

The 2008 BCPA National Skydiving Championships!

I dunno, still a rookie skydiver yet I'm actually getting points in the University leagues (a bronze for landing 3rd closest to the cross among the pre-qualified jumpers. Well, being a short fall from the Morecambe Bay quicksands was a huge incentive to aim right.)

In the end Warwick didn't beat uber-sporty Loughborough U, but it's a credit to Warwick Skydive that we even got close - placing second against teams from the UK's centre of sporting research is a huge plus. And the event itself - organised by 20something kids working furiously behind the scenes for nothing except pride - was brilliant: plenty to do, well attended, and full of fun.

That's the actual plane we jumped from, a PAC 750XL - undoubtedly the best plane I've ever exited the hard way. Fast climbing, smooth and quiet, no turbulence** and a dream to jump from. Brilliant. (The plane doesn't have the shark's teeth now, by the way - it was in a midair collision a year back and they've only just got it back, and it's better than ever despite an uneven paint job. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.)

And the plane, it seems, is the best thing about Cark dropzone. I don't know if it's the MBA or just instinct, but it's possible to 'smell' somehow when a business isn't well run, and compared to places like Langar or Hibbaldstow this little DZ was a joke.

Ticketing and Manifesting were run as one operation, not two, with a whiteboard instead of a list - so you had to be ready to manifest when you bought your ticket; no freedom to jump when you want. As any chef will tell you, this is inefficient, since there's no 'signalling' denoting how many people have 'reserved tables' and makes filling planes an ad hoc job without planning. This wastes customers' time and loses the centre money. Bad.

Second, why the hell do they require separate payments (one in cash) for jump tickets and kit hire? These operations may be separate businesses for the dropzone people, but customers don't care how many sets of accounts there are; we just want to jump. Miles from a cash machine, this procedure is inward-looking and unnecessary. Poor.

Third, they REALLY don't like student parachutists at Cark. Buying a ticket, they almost made me feel they were doing me a favour. I appreciate it's a hassle to hook up static lines, but today's learners are tomorrow's customers, and it's shortsighted to cut off your future cashflows. Why don't they treat trainees as an opportunity rather than a hassle? There's no way I'd jump at Cark again even after qualification; they've lost me as a customer for life.

But all Cark's faults were covered by the five days of skydiving fun, and even further by the parties and entertainments later (laser shows and bungee bouncing - cool!) And somehow I had no problem sleeping on the ground in bad weather; there's something about being under a well-pitched tent in a weatherproof bag at night, with the rain and wind howling but not coming in, that just feels awesome.

(**'No turbulence' is in skydiving terms of course. An 80mph wind is still pretty hairy.)

Spinning it with Bernoulli

I've decided to include a paper over 250 years old in the literature review of my MBA dissertation, Daniel Bernoulli's "Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis (Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk)". It's just possible this is the oldest paper ever cited in an MBA dissertation.

He's actually of very high relevance to my dissertation subject - a behavioural finance guy centuries before the term was invented, telling us why perceived risk means individual investors rarely use marginal utility for decisionmaking. This has a huge effect today, when millions of emotion-driven traders determine stockmarket values on the basis of sentiment in the media. But my ulterior motive is that citing a mathematical paper written by a Dutch academic, in 1738, in Latin, must surely guarantee me a Distinction.

Don't go for it, Fiorina

What the hell? Carly Fiorina wants to be John McCain's running mate. What would she do, spend two years propping up the weakest parts of the American economy, then buy Canada to create a distraction?!

Microfranchising

I've just framed a new concept in marketing: microfranchising.

Heading out of the boutique hotel this morning, K and I stopped off at a coffee shop for breakfast. The pastries looked good, but what pushed us inwards was the logo: the familiar Costa Coffee chain.

The shop wasn't a Costa Coffee, though. The coffee shop owners had simply 'franchised' one tiny part of their shop - the coffee machine - and stuck a Costa logo in the window. A microfranchise.

What this means is the shop owner is getting the best of both worlds. He's running his family cafe, with muffins and sandwiches far better than cardboard-wrapped chainstore fare, yet he also gains the increased traffic a big-name brand brings. (If you've ever seen a crowded McDonalds across the road from a struggling yet far better local burger joint you'll know how powerful this effect is.)

Now, I don't know how many cups of coffee the guy sells, but he's undoubtedly increased his store traffic as a result, and I bet Costa is smiling too, locking him in long-term to buying their coffee like a tied pub (and probably paying for the coffee machine on credit with interest, too.) Everybody wins. And with technology, franchise accounts that wouldn't have been economic for the franchisor twenty years ago - £500 a month, say - are worth servicing. Just another way in which technology has made the world better.